Offices in 10 major U.S. cities were just 33.1% occupied in the week ending Aug. 25. That figure is a slight increase over the prior week but down from a 34.8% peak in late July.
Rents
Asking rents for houses rose nearly 13% for the year to date through July, the highest annual increase in the past five years. The sharp rise partly reflects increasing demand from people who can’t afford to buy homes, and the slow supply of new houses as construction trails historical levels relative to population growth.
SPAC Rout
A group of 137 SPACs that closed mergers by mid-February have lost 25% of their combined value. At one point last month, the pullback topped $100 billion.
BX QTS
Blackstone completed their previously announced acquisition of QTS Realty Trust, a leading provider of data center solutions across a diverse footprint spanning more than 7 million square feet of owned mega scale data center space within North America and Europe, for approximately $10 billion.
Hotel REITs FFO
In the second quarter, hotel REITs’ cumulative funds from operations turned positive for the first time since early last year.
Direct Listings
Direct listings have an average rise of 64.4% from their opening trading prices while the S&P 500 had a 26.8% return and the Renaissance IPO index rose 31.1%.
Eviction Moratorium
The Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the latest federal ban on evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, siding with landlords against a moratorium the Biden administration imposed this month despite questions about its legality.
Dry Powder
The top 25 private-equity firms are sitting on $509.8 billion in uninvested cash, holding 22.3% of the global dry powder total of $2.29 trillion in August. That is a significant increase from December, when the worldwide total was just under $2 trillion; in December 2019, the figure was $1.63 trillion.
Hotel Transactions
In the second quarter of 2021, $13 billion in hotel transactions have taken place — the highest ever and twice the amount of transactions as happened in 2019.
Co-Working Gains
Shared office space firms are enjoying a rise in sales this summer as U.S. businesses grappling with the seismic changes in the workspace world sparked by the pandemic seek flexible and short-term solutions. Hundreds of companies particularly in the technology sector are taking spaces from these firms, ranging from a handful of desks to over 50,000 square feet for periods as short as one month. Many individuals are also doing this on their company’s dime as they wait for their employers to figure out when it is safe to require workers to return to pre-pandemic offices.